“I took those pictures myself with a Kodak camera your uncle Gene gave us one Christmas,” she said.

She turned over the heavy black page, revealing three more rectangular photographs held in with yellow corner tabs.

I took the brown paper bag out of my coat pocket and reached in for the plastic object Nurse Sarah had given me in the hospice parking lot.

I set the little green plastic horse on the oilcloth table runner between the two tea mugs.

The green paint had worn off along the tail, and the tip of the front right hoof was chewed flat by old tooth marks.